Laughing Monkey with Shawn Ratches

Shawn Ratches

Welcome to Laughing Monkey with Shawn Ratches which is a show that explores all genres of music. As someone with autism, I bring a unique perspective to my interviews, aiming to create an authentic and engaging experience for both artists and listeners.Thanks for watching and please subscribe to help me keep bringing new content to you!

  1. Paul Booth: The Dark Art Visionary Who Redefined Tattooing, Horror, and Creative Expression

    26. Juni

    Paul Booth: The Dark Art Visionary Who Redefined Tattooing, Horror, and Creative Expression

    Paul Booth is an American tattoo artist and multidisciplinary dark surrealist from Boonton, New Jersey, whose career has spanned nearly four decades. After beginning his tattoo journey in the late 1980s through an apprenticeship in New Jersey, he developed a signature black-and-gray style centered on macabre, psychological, and surreal imagery. Rather than follow standard flash trends, Booth built his name through large custom pieces that explored horror, religion, trauma, and the darker side of human nature. By the 1990s and 2000s, Booth had become one of the most influential names in tattooing, especially within metal and alternative culture. His work attracted high-profile musicians and performers, while his broader practice expanded into painting, sculpture, film, and music. He also earned recognition beyond tattoo culture, helping push tattooing toward wider acceptance as a serious art form. A major part of Booth’s legacy is the world he built around Last Rites in New York, an immersive tattoo and gallery space that became iconic in dark art culture. In 2000 he co-founded the Art Fusion Experiment, bringing tattooers and fine artists together in collaborative work. His fine art later reached international exhibitions, including a solo show at the H.R. Giger Museum in 2011 and a major museum exhibition in Paris in 2014–2015. Although Last Rites closed in 2020 during the pandemic, Booth remains a defining figure in the crossover between tattooing, outsider art, and dark contemporary art

    52 Min.
  2. Castle Rat's Riley Pinkerton: Long Live the Rat Queen, Forever in Her Realm

    9. Juni

    Castle Rat's Riley Pinkerton: Long Live the Rat Queen, Forever in Her Realm

    Riley Pinkerton doesn't just front Castle Rat — she is the Rat Queen. Songwriter, guitarist, costume-maker, prop-builder, and self-appointed monarch of a medieval doom metal kingdom of her own design, Pinkerton has spent the last several years turning a Brooklyn doom band into one of the most theatrical and beloved acts in underground heavy music. Castle Rat formed in 2019 and found their identity almost by accident, when a Halloween show at Saint Vitus turned into a full-blown costumed spectacle: Pinkerton as the Rat Queen, flanked by The Count, The Plague Doctor, and The Druid, doing battle onstage with the dreaded Rat Reaperess. The bit stuck. What followed was a fully realized fantasy world built on Sabbath-heavy riffs, Frazetta-painting visuals, and lore dense enough to include interdimensional time travel. Their 2024 debut Into the Realm introduced the kingdom. Their 2025 follow-up The Bestiary — crowdfunded to its goal in 37 minutes — expanded it into a sprawling book of beasts, each track a creature, each creature a chapter. Beneath the swords and smoke, the show is secretly about something deeply human: Pinkerton's own death anxiety, exorcised nightly through a ritual in which the Queen dies and rises again, chanting "Now is forever in this realm" with the crowd. In 2026, Castle Rat are touring North America with Dethklok and Amon Amarth, headed for Sonic Temple and Bloodstock Open Air, and quietly building a 12-foot rat puppet for the next chapter. Industry plant rumors aside — and Pinkerton finds them hilarious — Castle Rat remains stubbornly, gloriously DIY. Long live the Rat Queen.

    21 Min.

Info

Welcome to Laughing Monkey with Shawn Ratches which is a show that explores all genres of music. As someone with autism, I bring a unique perspective to my interviews, aiming to create an authentic and engaging experience for both artists and listeners.Thanks for watching and please subscribe to help me keep bringing new content to you!

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